The effects of reducing demand uncertainty in a manufacturer-retailer channel for single-period products

The retail-market demand for a newsboy-type product is uncertain. The product's manufacturer sets: (i) a wholesale price "w/unit" for selling the product to the retailer, and (ii) the refund amount "r/unit" (if any) for unsold units returned by the retailer. Given w and r, the retailer determines: (i) the quantity Q that he orders from the manufacturer, and (ii) the retailer price "p/unit" at which he sells to the consumers. Keeping in mind the retailer's freedom to set Q and p in the retailer's own interest, the manufacturer needs to determine how to set w and r that are optimal for the manufacturer. For this market structure, this paper studies how the level of retail-market demand uncertainty will affect the decisions (w, r, Q, p), the expected manufacturer's profit and the expected retailer's profit. Many of the effects turn out to be counter-intuitive with interesting explanations.